When grand jurors declined a bill of indictment against a white police officer for the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager, they stamped the words "Not True Bill" on the indictment.

In the olde days, when legal proceedings were in Latin, grand jurors would decline to indict by writing the word ignoramus on the bill.

Ignoramus literally means "we have no knowledge of" or "we do not know." It's from the same Latin root word that gave us "ignorant" and "ignored".

Some American grand juries still use the word "ignored" on rejected indictments.

That would be a more honest and accurate response.

Clearly, that's what the criminal justice system here and across the country continues to do: Ignore its implicit, and sometimes explicit, bias against people of color, and especially people of color without means.

The one and only Wall Street executive who went to jail for his part in the recent financial crisis was a guy born in Egypt.

"Our criminal justice system treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent," Bryan Stevenson, an Alabama attorney and author of "Just Mercy," said Monday evening at Facing History and Ourselves' annual banquet in Memphis.

Here in the capital of the Delta, rich = white and poor = black.

Does anyone doubt where Darrius Stewart would be today if Officer Connor Schilling had been shot and killed during their July 17 struggle?

Stewart would be in jail with Tremaine Wilbourn, who is charged with first-degree murder in the Aug. 1 shooting death of Officer Sean Bolton.

Instead, "Darrius Stewart is dead and Officer Schilling walks away free," said Dr. Stacy Spencer, one of a group of pastors who met Tuesday with Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich.

"The clergy were called together by the D.A. to go tell the crowd to remain calm after the news of no indictment," said Spencer, who called the grand jury's decision "a miscarriage of justice."

"Our voices will not be compromised. I can't tell the crowd of disenfranchised people to keep quiet. I can't tell mourning mothers not to be angry. We will not let an unarmed teenager who was killed by an overly aggressive officer die in vain."

We'll probably never know if the grand jury did the right thing in this particular case. Grand jury proceedings are kept secret, by law. The 800-page report on the TBI's investigation of the shooting is being kept secret, by law.

"We have to have faith in the system," Weirich said in a podcast interview Wednesday with Jacinthia Jones, our crime and justice coverage team leader.

How can people of color have any faith in a system that is so clearly and consistently stacked against them?

Weirich read the TBI report and decided there was sufficient evidence to indict the officer on a voluntary manslaughter charge. The grand jury disagreed. According to Weirich, such a disagreement is "very rare."

But that is the grand jury's right, by law.

Meanwhile, by law, black males are being arrested, indicted and incarcerated — and shot by police — at wildly disproportionate rates.

One in every 11 black men in America is under the supervision of the criminal justice system.

One in six black men has been incarcerated since 2001. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today (and one in six Latino boys) can expect to spend time in prison.

Black people represent 53 percent of Shelby County's population and 87 percent of its jail population.

Add those numbers to these.

In the past five years in Memphis, 36 Memphis police officers have been involved in the fatal shootings of 24 men.

Eighteen of the victims — 75 percent — were black men. Twenty-six of the officers — about 72 percent — were white.

That number also represents the degree of faith people of color seem to have in our criminal justice system.

"The American people have this lesson to learn, that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property would be safe."